Setbacks, departures at Lake County state's attorney office

March 11, 2012

The announced retirement of longtime Lake County State's Attorney Michael Waller coincided with some setbacks for the office in several troublesome cases:

•February 2012: Appeals judges bar key testimony in the planned retrial of Bennie Starks, who was freed on bond in 2006 after serving 20 years in prison for a 1986 rape in Waukegan. Prosecutors have not said whether they still intend to retry Starks.

•December 2011: In a decision highly critical of prosecutors and investigators, Illinois appellate judges reverse the third conviction of Juan Rivera in the 1992 murder of Waukegan baby sitter Holly Staker and bar Lake County from trying Rivera a fourth time. After nearly 20 years behind bars, Rivera is released from prison in January 2012.

•December 2011: Days before the Rivera decision is announced, longtime prosecutor Michael Mermel, who worked on the case and was head of the office's criminal division, announced his retirement after coming under fire for comments he made in the media that at least one critic called inappropriate.

•July 2011: Waller announces he will not seek re-election after more than two decades as Lake County's top prosecutor.

•June 2011: The lawyer for James Edwards, who was sentenced to life in prison in the 1994 murder of a Waukegan businessman, says new DNA tests from blood at the crime scene do not match Edwards. Lawyers continue to seek a new trial for Edwards, who since his imprisonment was also convicted of murdering an Ohio woman.

•August 2010: Five years after he was taken into custody and accused in the murders of his daughter and her friend, Jerry Hobbs is freed from Lake County Jail and charges are dropped. DNA evidence from the case was linked to another man — a Zion native who knew at least one of the victims, was later convicted of abduction and rape in a separate case and now awaits trial in a separate murder. He has not been charged in the Zion killings.